The Forgotten Qur'ans of the Eastern Islamic World - (Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art) by Alya Karame (Hardcover)

About the Book

The first in-depth examination of the earliest corpus of Qur'ans copied at the beginning of a transformative phase in the history of Qur'an production, at the eastern frontiers of the Islamic world.

Book Synopsis

The Ghaznavid and Ghurid Qur'ans (c. eleventh-Twelfth centuries CE), studied for the first time as a corpus, inform of how the Qur'an was copied at the beginning of a transformative period in the history of its production when paper, new scripts and the vertical format were adopted. As the book illustrates the ways in which local visual trends were shaped out of diachronic and synchronic multidirectional movement within a medieval landscape that was continuously in flux, it shifts the focus to the eastern frontiers of the Islamic world, reclaiming them as centres of cultural production. It is by contextualising the Qur'an's materiality within the religious, social and political context that the book 'rehumanises' them offering an understanding of how the manuscripts were conceived, produced and used, up until our day.

Review Quotes

The Forgotten Qur'ans is a compelling survey of aesthetics in the service of piety that offers a transformative perspective on calligraphy and the material Qur'an. It illuminates a neglected tradition of artistic creativity in the book arts of the Ghaznavid and Ghurid sultanates of Afghanistan, no less dynamic and innovative than that witnessed in their spectacular architectural projects. Challenging the hegemony enjoyed by a few select cities in standard histories of Islamic art, the book questions established notions of center and periphery, inviting us to reconsider their legacies to the field.--Finbar Barry Flood, New York University

Alya Karame offers a pioneering study of the production of Qurʾan manuscripts in the eastern part of the Muslim world in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. For the first time, the book provides a comprehensive overview of material that has never before been the subject of such a wide-ranging study.--François Déroche, Collège de France